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Small Vols-au-vents, a LA Parisienne

Small pastry shells filled with crème pâtissière and iced with fine sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Small Vols-au-vents, a LA Parisienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare small vols-au-vents using your preferred method.

Ice and fill

  1. Ice the edges with fine sugar immediately after removing from the oven.

  2. Melt the sugar with a salamander or heated shovel until it forms a pale glaze.

  3. Fill the hot vols-au-vents with the prepared crème pâtissière.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Rises and flakes in the oven to form the crisp, hollow case.
Fine sugar
Melts and caramelises under heat to form a pale, glossy glaze on the edges.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and a smooth set when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the crème pâtissière.

The step that matters

Icing the edges with sugar. Sugar must be applied while the pastry is still hot from the oven, because heat is what melts and caramelises it into a glaze. Once the pastry cools, the sugar will not melt properly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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